


stitches stitched, fixes fixed

by Trojie



Category: Bandom, Fall Out Boy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Dystopia, Ambiguous/Open Ending, First Aid, Kissing, M/M, Masturbation, i genuinely don't even know how to tag this lol
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-19
Updated: 2020-01-19
Packaged: 2021-02-27 04:01:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,178
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22320739
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Trojie/pseuds/Trojie
Summary: Andy's a squatter in a non-residential district. Joe has a bad habit of getting into fights for good reasons.
Relationships: Andy Hurley/Joe Trohman
Comments: 6
Kudos: 20





	stitches stitched, fixes fixed

Andy's hauling a gallon of water he's pretending he didn't see the rusty colour of when it came out of the tank back to his squat when he hears a thick, wet sound. It sounds like a side of raw beef being hit with a metal pole, loud even over the sloshing in his jerrycan. 

He sighs. 

Someone's always fighting over something on these streets. This isn't a good district to be squatting in - the water's gross unless you get it from the very public municipal fountain, they're far enough from the port and the retail hubs that food's harder to get hold of, and so yeah, people fight down here the way they wouldn't if they were living in the actual residential districts.

Andy doesn't live in the actual residential districts because that requires paperwork, ID, and other things he's not comfortable with handing over to the state. And he survives down here by mostly not getting involved in the fighting. 

Then there's a scream that sounds like someone young - very young, _too_ young - and he swears and turns around. 

There's a kid of indiscriminate age and sex but tiny, kindergarten-sized, not that the few kids round here get to go to school much, huddling against the wall and a lanky, curly-haired teenager struggling on the ground, trying to get up but more trying to be a barrier, kicking and punching wildly and not very accurately at a bigger, older guy who's very obviously trying to grab the little kid. 

Given how said little kid is shrinking away from that grabbing hand, Andy figures the person in the wrong is the adult, so he grabs them by the shoulder and rabbit-punches them under the chin. They go down like a tree. Andy kicks them just to be sure and then reaches over to grab the guy on the ground and pull him back to his feet. 

The little kid shrieks, and someone runs in from the crowd, scooping them up, and there's crying and 'mama, mama' and Andy tries to melt back into the alleyway he came from, scoops up his water and turns his back, except there's a hand on his arm. 

'Hey,' says the lanky guy. 'Thanks. I was on the ropes there for a minute.'

He wasn't just on the ropes, he was two seconds from getting his teeth kicked in, if Andy's any judge, but there's no point saying that, so Andy grunts and is about to turn away when the guy says, 'I'm Joe.'

'Nice to meet you,' says Andy, and doesn't give his name.

Joe holds his eye for a moment and then shrugs, when Andy doesn't give him an inch, and starts to move. He makes it maybe two steps before he staggers, and makes a noise that cuts right to Andy's gut. He drops the water and grabs for the guy on autopilot, as he starts to fall, and realises there's blood on the ground where he was standing - blood on the dirt, and staining Joe's dark shirt. He's heavy, rebar and concrete heavy, and Andy staggers under the sudden weight.

'What the fuck?' he says, reflexively, one hand curving under Joe's ribcage to take his weight, pulling him up. He's sweating cold, and the stain is sticky. 

'Huh,' says Joe, and he's amazingly lucid for a dude bleeding so much through his shirt. 'Guess I landed on the bottle.'

Andy looks over at the site of the scuffle and realises, yeah, there's red-stained glass on the ground. He loops his arm around Joe's shoulder and pulls him into a staggering walk. This is such a bad, bad idea but he can't leave someone out on the street to fucking bleed out. 

Plus, it won't be the first time he's got blood on his blankets, or the first time he's had to bail out of a squat for security reasons. He can sew this idiot up and then ship out when he's gone. There's a place a few blocks away he's been eyeing for a couple days, that'll work. It's dangerous to stay in one place too long anyway. 

It's a struggle, hauling the kid back to his place, even though it's only a few streets and a quick duck down a narrow, squelchy gut of an alleyway to the broken-windowed basement space he's boarded up and been sleeping in for the last couple of weeks. Joe tries, he stumbles but he tries, not helped by how fast Andy's trying to haul him. 

When they make it into hiding, Andy does his best to ease Joe down onto his mattress but the kid's heavy and he's taller than Andy. He goes down like a rock with a pained, reproachful grunt, and immediately curls up in a foetal ball, trying to keep both hands pressing down on his wound, so at least he's got some brains. 

'Good. Keep pressing on that,' Andy says, and goes to dig through his gear. 

It's not like he's got a lot of medical supplies, or a lot of supplies at all, but he's got a packet of C-shaped upholstery needles and some thin thread, salvaged from an unguarded warehouse and jealously hoarded. It doesn't matter how careful you are or how little you have, sooner or later, someone always notices you and wants something. It pays to be prepared. He also grabs the carboy that the last dregs of his water is in, and makes a face. He's gonna have to go back later for the tank he had to abandon when Joe collapsed, and pray it's still there. 

Easing Joe's shirt away from the cuts - three deep, long ones, and a mess of smaller ones, slashing through the skin obliquely like he slid over a cheesegrater- is the hardest part. Joe breathes sharp and hard through his teeth and doesn't complain, even though it must hurt like motherfuck. His fists are balled up under his chin now, trying to keep them out of the way of Andy ripping his shirt open, and he's flexing his fingers stickily, compulsively. 

Andy wipes down the cuts with the remainder of the shirt, dipped in the water and wrung out as much as he dares. Joe whimpers, 'fuck,' very quietly and very drawn out as the rough cloth riffles the rags of his flesh the wrong way, against the grain. 

'Sorry, man,' says Andy. 'Hold still.' He twitches the package of needles closer and tries to pull one out without getting his fingers on the others, with limited success. He manages to thread it without having to lick the end of the thread, which is an achievement. He tries hard not to think about sepsis, because bleeding out is sort of the immediate problem. 

There's no kind way to do this, so Andy just pinches up the edges of the first cut and pushes the needle through, and braces himself for Joe's body racking into a tighter curl as it tries to fight the sudden sharp pain. Andy grits his teeth and slides the needle through its own loop to knot the stitch, clips it, and moves on. Two more stitches, two more full-body twists, like laying a rope - and then Joe finally, blessedly, goes limp.

Andy passes a hand over Joe's forehead and his eyes twitch under his eyelids, but he doesn't stir. Passed out. 

'Good call,' Andy mutters, and sets the rest of the stitches as fast as he can, closing up the three big cuts and hoping to god that the tacky mess of blood will keep the little ones closed up by themselves, because there's no way his clumsy upholstery gear can handle tiny nicks like that. He dunks the shirt in the water again, wrings it out, and lays it over the hot, sticky mess. 

Then he curls up in the corner of the tiny space, and settles in to wait. He'd pray, but he's not a praying man.

***

The sunlight is lancing in through the gaps in the boarding-up job that was the best Andy could do, blinding him awake, and the first thing he realises is that he slept cramped up in the corner, and the second thing he realises is that the kid, Joe, is gone. Nothing but a bloodstain left of him. 

Andy spares a brief moment to be pleased at the absence of both a corpse and a live human in his space, and then stares at the bloodstain and thinks a thought he'd kind of framed last night but hadn't let fully form, which is; _well fuck. Time to move._

The mattress gets rolled up around his blankets, shitty foam losing pieces and squidging in that way that says it won't recover from this, just like it didn't recover from the last time, either - Andy's just gonna use it and move it and use it and move it til it's a thin petrochemical film between him and the dirt, probably, but where the fuck is he going to find another mattress in a hurry? - and he ties it up, leaves the bundle in the cleanest corner while he packs everything else into his rucksack. 

The bowl he used for the water to wash up the bleeding kid last night jingles when he picks it up. Inside is the packet of needles all closed back up again, a waxed-paper wrapped thing - heavy, dense, rectangular - that turns out to be a homemade granola bar, and a handful of small coins, mostly old denominations, the kind of mix of change people will still use as bartering tokens of a sort. Unprecious metal, not worth melting down, so they still work as counters. 

Huh. Andy sweeps the coins out of the bowl into the little bag he keeps shit like that in. The granola bar goes in his pocket. Andy never said Joe owed him a thing, but apparently some people do still know how to pay their debts. 

A last sweep, and Andy hefts his bedroll over his shoulders to rest on top of the rucksack, grabs his now very empty carboy, and shoulders open the door. This is the fifth squat he's left this year. He'd be worried he'll run out of places to sleep but this city is made up of the spaces rotted out from where people used to be industrious. He'll be fine. 

A couple of days later he passes by his old squat and by the door, tucked into a shadow, is his jerrycan, full of clean water. 

***

'You never told me your name,' says a voice in the dark-khaki shadow of a stairwell near Andy's door. Crawlway, really, but whatever. 

Andy has his forearm hard up against the swell of the dude's windpipe before he realises it's the kid he patched up a month ago. They slip on the icy ground for a teetering moment before Andy gets his feet back under him against a pile of dirty snow. 'Joe?'

Joe coughs. It lifts his chest under Andy's arm. And it bubbles in a way Andy doesn't like, reminding him it’s been too long a winter already. 'Yeah. And you are?' he says pointedly. 

Andy pulls back and looks at him. He's got two black eyes and a long cut down diagonally over his forearm. It's scabbed over, though, just like the bruises are days old. 'You got beaten up again,' he says. 

Joe shrugs. 'It's not as bad as it looks. And this time the kid's mom fed me after I brought him back, so. Came out on top.'

Maybe it's coincidence that he's here. Maybe. 'Another kid?'

'Too many of 'em go missing round here,' says Joe, face going a little bit dark. 'I'm not gonna just let some little boy get snatched right in front of my nose without trying to stop it.'

He's … he can't be more than seventeen. Maybe eighteen and underfed. Standing there half in shadow with old, stale blood pooling under his skin. For fuck's sake. Andy can't even find words.

'Hey,' Joe says, a little awkwardly. 'Did you find your water can?'

'Yeah. Thanks.' Andy wants him to go now, so that he can go inside and eat something and lie down. 

‘I just don’t want you to think I’m not grateful. For what you did, helping me.’ Joe says, long long eyelashes dipping low for a second as he steps closer. When he looks up, it’s at Andy’s mouth. 

‘Fuck off, kid,’ says Andy, as kindly as he can manage. ‘You paid your debt.’

‘Cool. Can I rack up a new one?’

‘... meaning?’ Andy says warily. This kid is up to something, he thinks, but of course he is. Everyone’s up to something. Fuck, Andy’s up to things of his own. 

‘Meaning I need somewhere to sleep.’

Andy sighs. ‘Get in there, then.’

He’s going to regret this. He knows it as soon as he tells the kid he can stay, and then he knows it again harder when they’re both in the squat, and the size of it hits home again. Andy’s not a big dude. He really only needs somewhere with enough room to lay his mattress flat in, a corner for his waste bucket, somewhere to stash his bag of food. Space is a luxury, but in winter it’s also a liability. This place is tiny, deliberately, and Joe’s an extra body in a small space. 

There’s nowhere here for him but on the mattress. With Andy. 

‘I can -‘ he says, looking at the corner full of Andy’s belongings, and Andy doesn’t like or want anyone that close to his valuables, thanks. 

‘No,’ Andy says, and points. ‘The bed. But you can take off that muddy shit first.’

He watches as Joe strips off his jeans and shoes, his battered hoodie. There are old, bad scars and fresh bruises up and down the kid’s legs and arms, and Andy was already coldly angry but this makes him angrier, without even the outlet of having someone to be mad at - unless he wants to be mad at Joe, and he really doesn’t. 

He turns away to shut up the squat’s door, bar it tight, and check all the rags stuffed into every chink of the place that might let in the outside air. It’s frigid all the same, but he can try. Behind him, Joe’s shuffling around and eventually Andy hears him hit the mattress, and the slither of the blankets. 

There’s the tiniest sigh, like it’s been a long time since Joe lay down somewhere soft, and Andy clenches his fingers into his fist hard. It’s not fair. Joe’s not a child to be coddled, but he’s hurting. He’s a dumbass who helps out strangers, and he brings this on himself, but … Christ. 

Andy doesn’t even know what to think, and that makes him rough when he throws himself down onto the mattress once Joe’s settled. It hurts everywhere his bones poke through his skin, which is … most places, because his mattress is just an illusion of softness these days, and he makes a noise. Joe almost turns over, but Andy prods him in the shoulder. ‘No. Go to sleep.’

Andy dozes, stiffly, on and off. He snaps fully awake when Joe rolls over and noses at his throat. ‘Hey, no,’ Andy growls, startled, and his hand comes down on Joe’s hip harder than he means, trying to push him away. 

Joe gasps, a pained gasp, and rolls closer. 

Andy sits up, and pulls his knees up in front of himself. ‘What the fuck?’

'It's nothing,' says Joe. Off Andy's accusing look, or the radiation of it maybe, given how dark it is, he says, 'well. It was something a couple days ago, but it was nothing just now, until you smacked it. Shouldn't grab people like that, dude.'

'Yeah, well, you shouldn't fucking snuggle strangers, _dude_ ,' says Andy. 'You don't even know my name.'

'It's cold,' says Joe, and there's something there, something Andy should pick at, but he's so fuck-off tired. 'And you won't tell me your name.'

'I said you could share my bed, I didn't include my body heat and personal details in the deal,' Andy says, lying back down. 'Hands to yourself, and if you could try really hard not to bleed all over my shit that would be great.'

'It's not bleeding,' says Joe. 'It's just a really big fucking bruise, okay, chill.'

They lie in silence for a while. Andy's maybe actually going to sleep, he can feel himself drifting, soft and easy, even though he's got this unknown right next to him and it should feel like a threat. He should be hypervigilant for all the ways Joe could fuck him over. 

But it doesn't, and he isn't. And that's why, when Joe's mouth brushes against his some indeterminate time later, when Joe murmurs 'thanks. For taking care of me,' he pretends to be asleep.

***

When the slush is knee-deep on the streets, scrounging gets harder and harder, and even Andy has to resort to barter for things. Grudgingly. Water for food, food for clothes and blankets. Coins for the cardboard and the actually-glass bottle he uses to filter more clean(ish) water from the gross khaki snowmelt, using gravel and cloth boiled clean. 

People offer to barter warmth, often. Andy doesn't like people enough to say yes, but he thinks about it, sometimes. When things are bitter and squats are draughty, it's hard not to think things would be better if someone else was wedged in here with you, to supplement the lack of electricity with their own endothermy. Body heat is a commodity.

(Everything, really, that humans do, is the sale of the human body to greater or lesser extent. Heat is a human resource.)

Some people barter music on street corners, or manual labour; some people barter knitting, some people barter carpentry, sex, childcare, cookery. Andy barters clean water, muscle for lifting, and a talent for keeping his mouth shut - all valuable commodities too.

He doesn't see Joe. He thinks of him sometimes, of how warm he was. It's probably a good thing he doesn't come by. Maybe a grateful mama took him in for the winter - stranger things have happened. More probably, fewer kids out in the cold means fewer public kidnappings, and therefore, fewer stupid situations for Joe to get himself into. 

Andy figures Joe's out there somewhere, selling whatever he can to get by, just like the rest of them. 

***

The fountain in the square starts trickling again reluctantly, stopping and starting with the temperature, as spring slowly thaws the city out. Andy keeps an eye on it, because as it groans and squeaks itself back to life, his filtered-water business winds down for the season. It means less to barter with, but god, the convenience of being able to just get water instead of having to devote space to the snow-filtration system is magical. 

It's also so fucking good to get out of his now-stinking squat. It was warm for winter, and he'll stay there as long as the temperatures are prickly-cold, but ugh. Warmth only happens if everything is gummed up tight and never disturbed - warmth is something you barter a certain level of cleanliness for. He's already looking for the next space, and the one after that, mentally packing his gear every morning before he leaves to take the carboy down to the fountain, waiting for the morning his fingers don't hurt as he dips his share of the water. 

He just wants to not stink, please. But winter's like that. 

He becomes aware he's being watched while he's filling his container, and has to resist the urge to whip around. When he does straighten up and put the water down, he spies a mop of brown curls and a familiar too-serious face that splits in a quick, lovely grin when they meet eyes. 

'Watching people is creepy,' says Andy. 'Hey, kid.'

'Yeah, well, if I knew your name I'd have said hi,' says Joe. He looks older, in that way that's nothing to do with the linear passage of time. He's got a pack on his back, bulging with unknowable but guessable necessities, and he looks less like a runaway, more like a man making his own life, than he did last summer. 

Andy will own to some gladness over that. 

He moves out of the way of the lip of the fountain, and Joe produces a bottle and comes close to fill it. Andy steps out of touching range, but, for reasons he couldn't articulate if someone asked, he doesn't just leave. When Joe bends to his task, his curls tumble greasily forward and Andy looks away from the vulnerable stretch of his neck, skin paled by winter. 

It's better to look out at the rest of the square, anyway, to keep watch for threats. That's the real advantage to being with someone as opposed to alone. Andy's never rated it that high in his personal mathematics of risk, not high enough to seek out herd membership for himself, but that doesn't mean he doesn't understand the concept. 

If he'd had someone to watch his back, he could have gone down to the hot baths under the remains of the library, and washed at some point this winter. Going alone is an invitation to have your shit stolen by one of the people who managed to fight themselves a spot in the undercroft of the place where it's warm but cramped, so Andy hasn't been. All winter, he's wiped himself down with cold damp rags, and dreamt of using the sliver of soap he has wrapped carefully up in a screw of paper in his bag. 

Even the fucking fountain, which he knows is frigid, is starting to look inviting. 

When Joe starts scooping freezing water up over his forearms, that's what decides Andy. Fuck it. 

'Hey, kid -'

'Joe,'

'Fine, Joe. Listen. How would you feel about a real fucking bath, in hot water?'

Joe looks him in the eye. 'For real?'

'For real. There's an old geothermal bath under the library building - you know it?'

'No! Fuck. No, I didn't know. Why the fuck did no-one tell me - or, wait. Actually. What's the catch?'

Andy shrugs. 'The usual - take your eyes off your shit and someone'll take it. It's a dumbfuck idea to go alone.'

Joe's grin lights his face up again for a second. 'Fuck. Yes, I will go to the secret hot baths with you and I don't even care if this is a line, dude, I'm so gross my clothes are gonna start walking away without me.'

'It's not a line,' says Andy, shouldering his bag. 'It's just a … i don't know, _you watch my back, I'll watch yours_ , arrangement.'

'If the water's actually hot, I'll wash whatever you want,' says Joe. 'I mean that.' 

'Good. You can wash yourself,' says Andy, as repressively as possible. 

***

Fucking requires enough trust to let someone under your clothes, so Andy mostly doesn't fuck any more. And jerking off provides too many opportunities for mess on blankets that are hard to wash, so in winter Andy lumps orgasms in with the drugs he doesn't take and the alcohol he doesn't drink and the meat he doesn't eat (even if that's mostly a symbolic prohibition - since when could he afford real meat?). He just _doesn't_ , and that's fine. 

The ecstasy of genuine cleanliness gets the better of him, after his bath, though. The feel of running a hand down his own body and not feeling clamminess against his palm is too good to stop doing. He's got his hand around his dick before he realises he's doing it, but fuck, it feels like something he needed. 

He gets himself to gasping fast, hips shoving against his right hand and his left pinching wherever it can find purchase, which isn't a lot of places on Andy's body, he doesn't have spare flesh to pinch, but the big tendons in his thighs, a nipple, a fingernail scraping down over the cage of his ribs, they all take it well. 

He know he made some of these noises earlier, is the thing - settling into hot water after a long hard winter would make anyone prone to weird orgasm groans. Joe had laughed at him, still futzing with his bag and stuffing his clothes into it, reducing the footprint of their shit and pulling both bags close to the water's edge, to keep within arm's reach of the pool, but he'd made the same fucking noise when he jumped in, too. 

It echoes round Andy's brain like it echoed in the ancient tiled, vaulted space, and his hand tightens incrementally, remembering and trying not to. It had sounded good, so fucking good. Hot and genuine and un-asked for, un-paid for. 

It wasn't for Andy, and yet here he is. Using it. Fuck, he hasn't touched himself in months and it shows - it should take more than a pretty noise in the mostly-dark to rev his engines, it really should. 

He comes over his fingers, not on the blankets, and he licks his hand clean rather than waste water on cleaning it, and he lies in the dark and wastes his afterglow on thinking instead.

He's not hurting anyone, and Joe never needs to know, but he should be more careful.

He really should.

***

It's not all grit and fights. After the fountain thaws, the plants come back strong in a blaze of new green between the cracks in the asphalt, and there are festivals, even down here in the industrial district. People need that. Need bright spots, after bitter winters. People bring out their musical instruments and saucepans to bang, and light fires in barrels, and there's dancing that Andy does not participate in, but it's nice to hang around and watch, tending a fire offhandedly and listening to, seeing, people enjoy themselves. 

(It's possible that he's enjoying himself too, but he won't admit it if you ask.)

'My mystery man,' says Joe from behind him, and Andy's going soft because he doesn't flinch when Joe throws an arm around him. 

He smells a little of alcohol and a lot of smoke - warm, heavy smells. He's warm himself. Andy doesn't need to be warm, so he shrugs him off. 'Good to see you,' he says gruffly. 

'Good to see you too,' 

Andy expects Joe to want to dance, but he props up the wall next to Andy instead, and just hangs out, easy and happy and quiet, among all the noise around them.

'Want a drink?' he asks after a while. 'I know a guy.'

'Don't drink,' says Andy. 'But thanks.'

He's expecting questions that he'll have to rebuff, but Joe says, 'okay,' easily, and stays where he is. 

A tail of dancers jingle-jangle by, and Joe snorts at them goodnaturedly. 'They're gonna be sore tomorrow, high-kicking like that.'

'Some people stretch first,' Andy points out. 'We don't all just throw ourselves at things with no forethought.'

'Spontaneity is the spice of life, or something,' says Joe, nudging Andy's shoulder. 'Live a little, buddy.'

Andy supposes he has to put up with "buddy". 

Or maybe he doesn't.

'Name's Andy,' he says, shrugging. Off Joe's questioning look, he adds 'You might have a point, that's all. About spontaneity.'

Joe beams at him, and then leans down and kisses him. Andy loses his breath, the words that were on his tongue to shrug off the moment he was afraid he'd inadvertently caused, and his hand comes up to steady Joe's shoulder on autopilot. To push him away, really. Definitely. 

It's a really good kiss, is the thing. 

Andy's fingers curl in Joe's shirt. 

Joe steps back, and licks his lips a little. 'You should listen to me more often.'

***

The endless ritual of filling the carboy is enlivened today by Andy also dunking and rinsing out his blankets. The new onset of summer heat will dry them fast, in the place he's currently living, and he barely uses them right now anyway. The city is on its way back to stinking and ripe, and there's water aplenty, so Andy takes as much advantage as he wants. 

He strips his shirt off and tucks it in his pack, draping wet wrung-out blankets over his shoulders instead, and turns to dip and fill the water container. A little ways over, around the lip of the fountain, a pair of women are doing roughly the same set of chores as he is, and their kids are ricocheting around. It's cute. 

One of the kids is watching him with big big eyes though, keeping close to one of the women. Andy assumes she's a daughter, a niece, something like that. He smiles, when he sees her watching him, because he's not an asshole - you smile at kids, okay? - and her eyes go very big and she ducks behind maybe-mama's knees. 

The woman looks up, and must catch Andy's confused face before he looks back at what he's doing, because she laughs. He's seen her around, he thinks? She looks familiar. 

'Don't worry, it's not you,' she says. 'She got grabbed a couple of days ago, I'm still having trouble getting her to come outside.'

The little girl points, mumbles something, and the mama (?) takes another look at Andy. 'No, honey,' she says. 'He's not the man who brought you back. He only had the nice colours on one arm, remember?'

Andy looks at his arms. 'You like my tattoos?' he asks the little girl, holding them out so she can see. She nods shyly. 'You're a lucky girl, that someone brought you home.'

'They're not having a lot of luck getting kids in this neighbourhood any more,' says the mother. 'Thank God.'

Andy has a sudden suspicion. 'Someone's getting them back?' he asks, trying to sound casual.

'Yeah. Damned if I know why, he never takes anything but patching up and a meal in return, but. I'm grateful for him, I can tell you that.'

Andy picks up his water, an unwelcome thought forming in his head. 'Yeah, I would be too.'

There's no-one waiting at his squat when he gets there, and he's glad, and he's also dumb, because who would be waiting? No-one knows he lives there. He spreads his blankets out in the sun that dapples the little space, that comes in through the chinks and gaps in the wood that forms the walls, and lays down to think. Or nap. 

When he wakes, the sun is low and the air is duck-egg blue and almost-evening hazy. He's a little groggy, so he decides to go for a walk, to clear his head. 

The screaming clears his head real good, turns out. Little-kid screaming isn't a noise Andy feels good about ignoring, so he chases it until he rounds a corner and finds the source - three little kids barricaded into a blocked-in doorway, and a fight. 

It's not an even fight. It's three on one, and the one is a mop of hair and a very bright arm's worth of new ink, and Andy puts his head down and shoves his way in before he can think it through. He gets Joe's back to the wall, at least. Three on two still isn't a fair fight but if they can get out of this without a kidney rupture they'll be doing great. 

And then Joe lands a desperate haymaker and the biggest assailant goes down hard, hard enough to puff street dust up in the air. Andy nearly falls over him, mid-way through a kick to one of the others that leaves him off-balance. The third asshole backs off of Joe and goes to grab at the kids instead, and fuck that, _no_. Both Andy and Joe lunge for him.

Two on two is better odds. Two on one is great, but running away with three kids bundled up between you is, honestly, the best thing. They don't even have to get that far before they find a gaggle of people calling names desperately in the street, and the kids start wriggling in their hold. Joe nearly falls over, trying to let down the little boy he's carrying before he frees himself and falls to the ground trying to get to his mama, and Andy catches him. 

Joe's lip is split. And his eyebrow. And the arm that isn't half emerald and gold is splattered with bruises of varying vintage. He's a rainbow. 

'C'mon,' Andy says roughly, tugging at his arm with the fingers that have slid down to bracelet his wrist, and Joe follows him without any kind of a fight or a question.

They tumble into the sunlit squat already half tangled with each other, and Andy turns to rummage for the stingingly astringent antiseptic he has squirreled away, only Joe follows him, presses against his back and kisses below his hairline. Hisses, when Andy twists back to him and their mouths press together. 

Andy tastes blood. He pushes Joe back a little. 'Jesus,' he growls. 'Let a guy work.'

'I'm fine,' Joe says, on the edge of breathless, but he sits and submits when Andy wipes his eyebrow over with a scrap of cloth dunked in the antiseptic, pokes at it trying to see if it needs a stitch (it doesn't), and then bullies him into taking his shirt off. 

The worst he was hiding under it is bruises, thank god. Bruises and art, that Andy can't help brushing an admiring finger over. 'Nice work,' he says, and his voice isn't soft yet, but he's calmed down enough for it to be quietly said. 'This must have taken a while.'

'It did,' Joe says. 'But it was worth it.'

Andy knows what he means. 

'Put your shirt back on, and lie down,' he says, and bends back to put away his first aid kit. He figures they should lie low for a while, and also that Joe probably hasn't slept in a bed for at least a few nights. 

It's not sleeping time yet, the sun is still ekeing out a presence in the sky, or at least the light that suffuses the space they're in is still pinkish, and not blue-dark. Andy lies down too. 

Joe reaches out and touches high on Andy's cheek. It hurts. 'Sun's coming up,' he says wryly. 'You didn't have to come save me, y'know. But I'm not sad that you did.'

Andy winces, because he didn't realise he'd got hit that hard until Joe touched it, but now it hurts. Joe trails his fingers down Andy's face. 

'You think I would have walked past?' Andy asks. 'I can't just leave kids to get hurt.'

'Kids, huh?'

Joe's smile is wry, and Andy rolls his eyes. 'Kids, and idiots who take on fights with stupid odds.' He lays a hand on Joe's sternum, where under the pulled-looose collar of his shirt, green ink borders a bruise that's going to come up like a plum by morning. It'll be pretty. 

Joe leans in, and Andy pulls him close enough to tuck his fluffy, curly head low, to hug him, rather than … anything else. 'Rest, dumbass,' he murmurs.

'But I -' Joe mumbles against Andy's skin. He pulls back a little, and Joe wriggles free, and kisses him again. His mouth is rough, bitten, swollen on one corner, but he doesn't taste of blood this time, and Andy doesn't have it in him to push this away again. Not when he aches. Not when Joe's warm against his bruises, close to his chest like a secret. His hands are broad and they spread over the small of Andy's back. 

This time it's Andy who breaks the hold. 'We gotta _rest_ ,' he says. 

''m resting,' says Joe softly, kissing Andy again. 'Lying down and everything.' He's a little bit hard against Andy's hip, a promise of where this could go. Andy runs a hand down his side, though, and he hisses.

'You're hurting,' says Andy. 

Joe's eyes fill with a different kind of hurt, and Andy can't take it. 

'Raincheck,' he says, firmly. He punctuates it with another kiss, a stupid kiss. 'Hey, c'mon. Another time, alright?'

Joe lets out a long, deep breath, and nods. 'Yeah, okay. Raincheck.'

'We're laying low,' Andy points out. 'We can't lose our heads here, okay? Do you want those guys and their business partners to find us? We gotta be a little stealth, buddy.'

Joe nods again. 'I got it, it's okay. You don't need to keep finding reasons.' He sits up, and stretches gingerly. 'I should get outta here, then. Safer that way, right?'

'Hey, no, you don't have to go,' says Andy, stiltedly. It would be safer, probably. At least for Andy. He should be prioritising that.

Joe ignores him and gets to his feet. 'No, it's better like this. I'm good, I promise. You fixed me up.'

'Joe -'

'I owe you one,' says Joe, smiling crookedly, and he's gone before Andy can stop him. 


End file.
